Era of Harmonious Relations
The Era of Harmonious Relations was a period in the history of the Confederation of North America between the Trans-Oceanic War and the Crisis Years. The period was characterized by economic growth in the Northern Confederation, the spread of Negro slavery in the Southern Confederation, increasing alienation among the Francophone majority in Quebec, and growing white settlement in Indiana. The period ended with the collapse of Barings Bank in London, which precipitated the Panic of 1836. The name of the era was coined by the historian Howard Pugh in his 1890 history The Era of Harmonious Relations, and Pugh's general thesis that the period was one of continuity and growth was generally accepted for the next thirty years. Since then, Sobel notes, historians have recognized that there was greater political and economic conflict at the time than Pugh claimed. Indiana Although Sobel does not specifically say so, the establishment of the Confederation of Indiana in 1782 would have encouraged an influx of white settlers from the eastern confederations, as the Indianan government negotiated land purchases from the Indian tribes and carried out surveys of the confederation. By 1810, the population of white settlers in Indiana had risen to 250,000. The Indian tribes, who numbered about 40,000 altogether, grew increasingly concerned as the number of white settlers continued to rise. In 1803, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh and his brother Tenkswatawa, known as the Prophet, began to gather most of the Indian tribes in Indiana and eastern Vandalia into a confederation to protect their lands from settlement by the white colonists. In 1808, Tecumseh and Tenkswatawa established a political organization to govern the confederation, and the following year Tecumseh established an Indian army. Tecumseh's army defeated a force of Indiana militia under General William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Twin Forks in 1810. The next year, the Indians wiped out a militia force at the Battle of Bloody Creek. By 1814, Tecumseh's army was laying siege to the North American capital at Burgoyne, and Harrison was obliged to seek help from the eastern confederations. Army units from the east arrived in Indiana in the summer of 1815, and Harrison was able to lift the siege of Burgoyne and force Tecumseh's army to retreat. However, Harrison was unable to inflict a decisive defeat on Tecumseh, and the Indian leader's confederation remained a threat to Indiana's settlers until the coming of the Rocky Mountain War. For the next two generations, most of the cities in Indiana were enclosed within defensive fortifications to protect them from Indian attacks. In spite of the threat posed by Tecumseh's organization, Indiana continued to attract settlers during the Era of Harmonious Relations. The confederation's population rose to 900,000 in 1820; 1.7 million in 1830; and 3.5 million in 1840. Michigan City was founded at the southern end of Lake Michigan, and in 1836 was linked to the Northern Confederation by railroad. By 1840, the city's population had risen to 500,000, and it was the fifth largest city in the C.N.A. By then, other commercial centers such as Kent and New Boston had appeared. Quebec There was little enthusiasm among the inhabitants of Quebec when news reached the confederation of the outbreak of the Trans-Oceanic War with France. During the war, Paul Cerdan sought to rally the Francophone population to support the French, but was unsuccessful. After the British victory in the war, the growth of commerce and industry in the N.C. resulted in Quebec becoming an economic adjunct to it. This led to the rise of a separatist movement among the Francophone population that was organized into the Free Quebec Party in 1810 by Cerdan and Pierre Ribot. The F.Q.P. sought recognition of French Quebec's autonomy within the confederation. Although Ribot professed loyalty to the C.N.A., it was later learned that he sought the violent overthrow of the Anglophone government in Quebec City and independence for Quebec. However, Cerdan and Ribot were dull men who lacked the charisma needed to lead a popular movement. Two other political parties appeared among the confederation's Anglophone population and more moderate Francophones. The wealthier citizens of Quebec City formed the Liberal Party, also known as the Progress Party, which sought investment from New York City and London to increase commerce and industry, and develop the north country. The Liberal Party called for strong imperial ties and full partnership by Quebec in the C.N.A. In response, a group of farmers, urban workers, and small business owners centered in Montreal formed the Farmers Congress in 1812, which was renamed the Conservative Party the following year. The Conservatives opposed industrialization, and sought to keep Quebec's economy based on agriculture and animal husbandry. They saw the Liberals as agents of foreign powers, who would cooperate with strangers to exploit their brothers. The anti-urban and anti-foreign sentiments of the Conservatives made them natural allies of the F.Q.P., and the Liberals accused them of sedition and disloyalty. However, when the Conservatives gained control of the government in the 1814 elections, they proved too moderate for the F.Q.P., which turned to terrrorism and sporadic violence. Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals were able to arrive at a solution to the problem of Francophone separitism. The Southern Confederation The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 eliminated a bottleneck in the production of cotton. The result was a surge in the production of cotton in the Southern Confederation, and a vast expansion of the acreage devoted to its growth. However, the increased production also resulted in increased indebtedness, investment in slaves, and an expansion of the African slave trade. Plantations spread across western Virginia and North Carolina, and huge landed estates appeared in the province of Georgia. The rising wealth of the planter class created brilliant social scenes in the Southern cities of Norfolk, Charleston, Cornwallis, and New Orleans. The slave population of the S.C. rose sharply with the rise in cotton production. In 1810, Negro slaves made up a sixth of the confederation's population. By 1836, the proportion had risen to more than a quarter. Slave insurrections became commonplace, with over six hundred individual uprisings recorded during this period. The most significant slave uprising was Howard's Rebellion, which spread from Virginia to the Carolinas in 1815, affecting every major plantation in those provinces and destroying N.A. £20 million worth of property. Although Howard's Rebellion was put down, it inspired other slave uprisings such as the Levering Conspiracy of 1821, and the Insurrection of 1829 which resulted in the deaths of over 1,400 whites and 3,000 Negroes. By the 1830s, the S.C. had become a vast armed camp, with a large army devoted to maintaining control of the slaves, and the second-largest navy in the world tasked with protecting the slave trade and assisting in the suppression of slave uprisings. The 1830s also saw reduced yields as older cotton fields in the east suffered from eroding soil, and the last of the confederation's unsettled land in western Georgia was brought under cultivation. Southern politics was divided between the Liberal Party, which was supported by the planter class and their merchant allies in the cities, and the Conservative Party, which was made up of small farmers, urban workers, and the few free Negroes. The Liberals supported low tariffs, improvements to the confederation's ports and waterways, and a large military. The Conservatives sought higher tariffs, subsidies for industrial plants, a limit to the size of plantations, and a smaller military. Initially, neither major party opposed the continued expansion of slavery. However, in the wake of the Levering Conspiracy, abolitionist sentiment rose until a number of abolitionist organizations joined together in 1825 to form the Southern Union. Liberal leader John Calhoun of Georgia took a strong stand against abolitionism, delivering his Defense of the Realm speech after the Insurrection of 1829. In his speech, Calhoun insisted that slavery, right or wrong, was essential to the confederation's power and prosperity, and must be maintained. Conservative leader Willie Lloyd of South Carolina took the opposite approach, calling slavery "the bane of our state, bleeding us at every occasion, destroying the fabric of our society, and making slave and slaveholder alike less than men." Lloyd allied the Conservatives with the Southern Union and with British abolitionists. The 1833 elections produced a Liberal majority, and Calhoun became Governor-General of the Southern Confederation. Slavery in the S.C. continued to maintain its grip on the confederation. The Northern Confederation In the N.C., the industrial revolution which was already taking place in Britain began to appear in the 1820s with the start of a railroad boom. Cornelius Vanderbilt of New York combined the expansion of the Northern Confederation Central Railroad with a fleet of trans-Atlantic cargo ships to gain control of the confederation's European trade. Malcolm McGregor founded a major industrial complex in Philadelphia that included iron foundries, mines, and mercantile establishments, and gave him undisputed control of southeastern Pennsylvania. The term McGregorization was applied to the domination of other parts of the N.C. by powerful industrialists. The rising industrialists began using their wealth and power to gain control of the Northern Confederation Council starting in 1814. The Council's industrial cabal sponsored legislation raising tariffs, subsidizing manufacturing, and easing restrictions on the creation of private banks. In 1820, they organized themselves into their own Liberal Party, and went on to win control of the Council in the 1821 elections. The new Liberal majority selected Daniel Webster of Massachusetts as Governor of the Northern Confederation. Under Webster's leadership, the Council passed the Tariff of 1822, the Bank Bill of 1822, the Internal Improvements Bill of 1823, and the Harbors Act of 1823. Webster's crowning achievement during his first term was the creation of the Bank of the Northern Confederation, which was modeled on the Bank of England, with the power to manipulate the currency, usually to the advantage of the industrial class. Webster's success led to the formation of a rival political party, the Conservative Party, representing the interests of farmers, urban workers, and small businessmen. They gained control of the Council in 1825, and Webster was replaced as governor by Conservative leader Martin van Buren. The Conservatives' manipulation of the banking system was a major cause of the Depression of 1829, which brought the Liberals, and Webster, back to power in 1831. After losing control of the Council, Conservative groups abandoned politics. Urban workers formed a labor union called the Grand Consolidated Union which used strikes and other labor actions to agitate for better pay and working conditions. At the same time, the confederations' farmers formed the Freeholders' Alliance to seek currency inflation, anti-creditor laws, and the abolition of the Bank of the Northern Confederation. A financial crisis in London in late 1835 brought about the Panic of 1836, when a series of bank failures in New York City brought an end to the prosperity of the N.C. and the beginning of the Crisis Years. Sources Sobel's primary sources for the Era of Harmonious Relations include Ribot's My Life and Works (London, 1829); Sir Malcolm Smith's An Address to the People of the Southern Confederation (Norfolk, 1834); Sir Joshua Hendly's Travels Through the Southern Confederation in the Winter of 1833 (London, 1835); Webster's The Program for Progress (New York, 1838); Harrison's The Autobiography of William Henry Harrison (Burgoyne, 1840); and Calhoun's Defense of the Realm and Other Essays (Norfolk, 1845). His secondary sources include Pugh's The Era of Harmonious Relations (New York, 1890); Philip Key's Internal Dislocations in the Early Nineteenth Century (London, 1921); Burgoyne Garner's Origins of the Conservative Party in the Northern Confederation (New York, 1929); Howard Tracy's Vipers in the Garden: Party Struggles in the Era of Harmonious Relations (New York, 1930); Albert Todd's Industry and Commerce in the N.C.: 1810-1840 (New York, 1943); Theodore Holmes' Slave Rebellions in the 1820s (New York, 1945); Andrew Shepard's The Northern Confederation in the Violent Years, 1835-1839 (New York, 1945); Andrew Sloan's The Colossus of the East: The Rise of the Northern Confederation (New York, 1952); Thomas Taggert's Ribot of Quebec: Patriot or Demagogue? (New York, 1954); James Paulding's The Indian Question in Indianan Foreign Policy (New York, 1959) and One State, Two Nations: Indianan and Indian (New York, 1967); James Barrett's Counting the Cost: The Legacy of Tecumseh (Mexico City, 1960); Hugh Scott's Giant in Chains: Van Buren and the Conservatives (Mexico City, 1960); Robert Small's The Role of the Railroad in the History of the Northern Confederation (Mexico City, 1960); Martin Kleberg's The Pugh Thesis Revisited (New York, 1961); George Caldwell's Free Men in a Slave State: The Origins of the Southern Union (New York, 1964); Ernest Passman's Lloyd of Carolina: A Political Biography (New York, 1965); John Snodgrass's Cotton as a Factor in the Southern Confederation (New York, 1965); Etienne Bayard's The Sputtering Fuse: The French Question in Quebec in the Nineteenth Century (Quebec City, 1967); Martin Denny's The Northern Confederation in the Era of Harmonious Relations (New York, 1967); James McCormick's The Anti-Liberals: Their Origins (New York, 1967); James Ripley's The Webster Legacy: The Creation of an Industrial Commonwealth (New York, 1967); Thomas Ripley's The Political Structure of the Northern Confederation in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York, 1967); Henry Brand's Tecumseh and the Indianan Wars (New York, 1970); Thomas Rivers' Daniel Webster and His Confederation (New York, 1970); and Ricardo Rodriguez's Slavery as an Issue in the Southern Confederation (Mexico City, 1970). ---- This was the Featured Article for the month of January 2015. 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